Luminous
Film & Video
| Review
by Crites
I'd
first heard of CUT THROATS NINE in an interview
with a member from the great band of the
same name, who was relating how the film's
violence was so overwhelming as to be inspirational.
And with both Psychotronic (quoted
on the box cover as saying this is "Possibly
the most violent Eurowestern ever made")
and the DVD shell itself lauding the film's
uniqueness ("Easily the most mean-spirited,
hateful, gory spaghetti Western ever made")
CUT THROATS NINE definitely sounded like
a picture not to be missed.
It all begins in a snowy mountain
region, as a group of Union soldiers escorts
a chain gang of seven prisoners from the
Golden Sand Mine along the 400-mile trail
to Fort Green. Between them the prisoners
have been convicted of multiple counts of
robbery, rape, arson, and murder, and are
being carried to the Fort to finish off
their life sentences as members of a prison
workforce. The journey has barely begun
however when the convoy is waylaid by a
clan of mountain men hungry for gold. Enraged
at finding only prisoners, the highwaymen
murder all but one of the soldiers and send
the wagon's driverless horses running blindly
along the uncertain terrain. After the calamitous
wreck the lone remaining soldier, Sergeant
Brown, directs the prisoners to continue
the journey on foot, still chained together
at the ankles.
And so begins an arduous trek
through unforgiving mountain wilderness,
as in the face of cold, hunger, and exhaustion
Brown attempts to guard himself and his
daughter Kathy (Emma Cohen, who has the
misfortune of being along for the ride after
an as-yet-unknown member of the chain gang
murdered her mother in Golden Sand) against
the rapacious spite of his bloodthirsty
charges. All of whom are just waiting for
a chance at his throat and his child. Under
such conditions the men and horses begin
dying off; first Slim "The Snake"
is strangled to death, put out of his misery
because his broken leg was a burden on the
gang, and not much later one of the horses
is put down for a similar reason. When Brown
commands the men to carry Slim's body, they
resolve the dilemma of the added cargo by
burning it.
When their meager provisions
run out the group sustains themselves with
wild dog, and it is during one of these
banquets that the convicts discover that
their chains are made of gold. Literally
– to hide the bounty from potential
thieves and the prisoners themselves, a
fortune in the mine's gold has been pounded
out and disguised as chain link. This introduces
a new dynamic to the situation, as the chain
gang, emboldened by the notion that Brown
needs them to haul the bullion to Fort Green,
stops dead and refuses to be treated as
pack animals any further. Brown quickly
puts a stop to this rebellion by shooting
one of them in the eye, and knowing he could
easily do the same again the group begrudgingly
trudges on. But having witnessed the murder,
and the subsequent hacking off of the dead
man's foot to remove his shackles, Kathy
comes to realize that there's little difference
between her father and the men he's guarding.
As the weather worsens Brown
and his daughter begin to falter, weakened
by the cold and strain. All the while the
convicts watch them closely, biding their
time until their moment arrives. Which it
does when the chain gang, moving ahead,
are the first to reach an isolated cabin
located in the middle of nowhere. From inside
the prisoners peer through the windows to
watch as Brown, under the burden of having
to carry his daughter for the past few miles,
staggers and collapses in the snow. After
being allowed to chill down a little further
the pair are brought inside, and Brown is
finally given the beating the convicts have
been waiting to deliver throughout the film.
Then it's the girl's turn, and despite some
token intervention from convict Dean Marlowe,
Kathy is assaulted and brutally gang-raped.
The following day the chain
gang enacts an even more horrible vengeance
upon the lawman before hauling Kathy, still
in shock, along with them to their new destination.
The group now hopes to reach Caldwell's
place, an inn and farm near Fort Green that
they trust will not be overrun by soldiers.
As the men trek on Marlowe surreptitiously
strangles John "Weasel" McFarland
from behind for his instigation of Kathy's
rape, and while gang leader Thomas Lorne
nearly kills Marlowe on the spot, he realizes
that with their numbers dwindling they will
need every man alive to haul the precious
cargo to freedom.
Lorne soon comes to regret
this move when he hands Brown's pistol over
to Marlowe so that the more capable man
can bring down some wild game; after shooting
some supper Marlowe takes charge of the
group by refusing to hand over the firearm.
This arouses much resentment in the remaining
men, particularly in Gil Ferro, "Il
Comanchero," who vows to kill Marlowe
the first chance he gets.
As they near their destination
convict Ray Brewster slips away from the
party, stealing their provisions and setting
off on a route of his own that won't pass
so closely by the soldier-ridden Fort. Armed
with a bottle of whiskey and a heavy length
of gold chain he stumbles through the wilderness
in a state of delirium until a vision of
Sergeant Brown's revenant overwhelms him.
Incapacitated, Brewster is easily apprehended
by the same murderous mountain men from
before, who upon seeing his gold force him
to lead them after the rest of the escapees.
Brewster murders them all the first chance
he gets, but he takes a bullet as well and
dies in the snow next to the coveted gold.
Shortly thereafter the surviving
convicts reach Caldwell's. A group of Union
soldiers from Fort Green sits drinking and
gambling as Marlowe and Lorne re-arm themselves
and Il Comanchero makes a thinly-veiled
reference to Caldwell about an old score
that needs settling. After the group has
eaten and been drinking for some time Caldwell
urges the soldiers to take action, but when
faced with the convicts' equal firepower
the drunken soldiers quickly give up and
get drunker. Hours later, after the soldiers
have been driven out to the barn and tied
up, Il Comanchero confronts Caldwell about
the false accusation of thievery that put
him on the chain gang so long ago. After
saying his piece the convict guts Caldwell
with his machete, then hangs him up on a
meathook to drip dry.
Later, as the soldiers sleep
it off, Kathy tries to rouse them and cut
them loose but is caught in the act by Lorne.
A violent struggle breaks out among the
convicts, during which the killer of Kathy's
mother is revealed in a gory flashback shortly
before the film's explosive climax.
It's a rousing idea, taking
a period piece and turning it into a splatter
film. Which is what Marchent and co. have
done here – with elements taken from
the genres of the Western, the chain gang
picture, the murder mystery, the survival
tale, and of course the splatter film, CUT
THROATS NINE is a melting pot of influences.
And one that boils up with mixed results.
The use of explicit (and redundant) gore
to enhance what wants to be a classic tale
of criminals and lawmen battling the elements
and each other for a fortune in gold is
a solid notion, but the gradual pace of
the picture, which never really builds up
into the WILD BUNCH-style body count one
might hope for, greatly defuses the tension
the filmmakers are attempting to generate.
While tragedy and struggle abound here,
and many of the characters reach fitting,
or at least violently gory, ends, instead
of being a suspenseful action-packed unfolding
of plot the film's scattered progression
instead mirrors the the trials and tribulations
of the journey and the characters, making
it an arduous ordeal in itself. Enhancing
this feeling is the frequent use of an awkward
freeze-frame flashback technique, which
attempts to fill in some blanks in the background
of the characters but with their often inessential
focus end up slowing down rather than elaborating
upon the story.
Another flaw in the presentation
is the lack of charisma present in the actors.
All except for Kathy are crude two-dimensional
portraits of base but colorless humanity,
and her behavior is so alternatingly helpless
and curious that when she does take action
it comes as an unexpected and almost inappropriate
surprise. Granted the dubbing from the original
Spanish may have knocked the pathos down
a rung or two, but it doesn't take very
long to reach a point in the picture where
you're simply waiting for the next character
to be killed off. And waiting, and waiting...
But after all of that has
been said, CUT THROATS NINE is still a picture
deserving of attention. Its sadism might
not be of legendary proportion, but it does
break any number of molds and in the process
makes for an unusual picture that emphasizes
the violence and hardship of a bygone era.
And it does so in a gratuitously bloody
fashion, in a way that would surprise the
hell out of you if you walked in on the
movie halfway through, expecting some standard
pseudo-Western outing, and all of a sudden
were confronted with a close-up of charcoal-grilled
face. It may not have the fastest plot in
the West, but it does score points for originality.
Cinematographically, the dramatic
natural scenery, shot in the "Pirineous
of Huesca," is fittingly more imposing
than majestic (interiors were shot in Madrid).
And the multiple scenes of violence and
bloodshed are quite gruesome indeed, including
disembowelment, burning, gunshots to the
face and head, dismemberment, and the like.
Special features of the DVD
include filmogrpahies ("Talent Files")
of actors Robert Hundar (AKA Roberto Hundari,
who played Marlowe) and Emma Cohen (AKA
Emmanuela Beltran Rahola), a publicity gallery
of stills and posters, and trailers for
both the American and German releases.
$24.95 from Luminous
Film & Video Wurks, P.O. Box 289,
Hampton Bays, NY, 11946
